


all along

by jarynw02



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Childhood Friends, Drabble, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Manga Spoilers, Mutual Pining, One Shot, Pining Iwaizumi Hajime, Pining Oikawa Tooru, Spoilers, bc lets be honest thats canon, but a happy ending, i cant write an iwaizumi that isnt pining, iwaoi - Freeform, long distance, you cant change my mind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:00:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26163784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jarynw02/pseuds/jarynw02
Summary: “I think,” Oikawa says, the coy lilt in his voice damp, heavy, “that we should make a bet.”A shoulder knocks him off his path and Iwaizumi takes a stumbling few steps to straighten as the front gates of their high school loom overhead. He looks up and Oikawa is waiting.“I’m listening.”“One day,” Oikawa says, a skip to his voice that he doesn’t seem to have the energy to actually perform the way he sometimes does as they follow the same route they do every day, “we’ll play together again-- on opposite sides of the net.”He avoids Oikawa’s eyes, looking ahead at the final dregs of sunlight clinging to the horizon and pretends he doesn’t see Oikawa’s limp in his peripherals.“When that day comes,” Oikawa says, blissfully, painstakingly, ignoring Iwaizumi’s mood, “if I win, you’re going to kiss me.”
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 3
Kudos: 182





	all along

There’s a moment, as he steps onto the polished veneer of an exalted court behind the vibrating energy of his team, that he realizes today is about so much more than volleyball-- so much more than the points or the plays or the strategy or the path that led them all here. Today is a day for victory and defeat, for an accumulation of lives spent between players and coaches and staff, like himself, and all the years labored between them. 

For Iwaizumi, it is more. 

  
  
  


_ His hair seems to whisper, he thinks, and it’s such a distracting, humiliating thought that he pauses at the precipice of concrete steps that will lead them out and beyond-- into an unknowing future full of the unstable ground of change that neither of them are equipped to handle after so long by each other’s side. The season for them ended so long ago, and they don’t dare to train in their uniforms anymore, instead packing those sacred momentos in dark corners of their rooms, only to be overturned in moments of weakness and of strength. Still, sweat lingers on his brow and a quick glance down to Oikawa’s knee sends a jolt through him that leaves him clenching his jaw, but he is otherwise silent in the fading evening sun with their gym, the home they’ve shared for three years, behind them.  _

_ He has that look on his face again, the one Iwaizumi has learned over and over again from middle school onward-- the far-off look dawning across his tawny eyes more often than ever as their graduation crept on their heels, stalking and waiting for this day.  _

_ High school is over.  _

_ Tomorrow they will go their separate ways-- for the very first time.  _

  
  
  


The roar is nothing Iwaizumi has ever heard. People swarm the stands overhead, their buzzing a living beast of anticipation clawing and nagging and  _ screaming  _ at the show preparing beneath them. Shutters snap and cameras roll from every angle, one swinging low from the rafters and sweeping across the massive stadium. The media line the walls in their rubber-soled sneakers beneath clashingly fine attire set for a stage rather than a match with all their neatly pressed skirts and crisp blazers, huddling together in twos and threes, hiding their comments behind plaintive hands. 

It’s dizzying, mortifying,  _ electrifying _ and Iwaizumi has never quite felt so alive. 

But then he sees their opponent touch down on the opposite end of the court and he remembers that’s just not true. 

  
  
  


_ Oikawa turns to him, that whispering hair alight in the gentle twilight breeze and Iwaizumi waits for the prodding, for the telltale jab at his expense, a gripe or a downright insult, but it doesn’t come. Instead, Oikawa scans his face with eyes that have seen his eight year old curiosity, his eleven year old tears, his fifteen year old fury, and his seventeen year old heartache. He wonders, briefly, what Oikawa sees in him now-- now that everything is over and all their life together is about to be overwritten by time and distance and all the things left unsaid bubble and fester like the wound so poorly covered by his barely there heart.  _

_ A risen corner of a smile greets him instead.  _

  
  
  


He’s there. 

He’s there--he’s here, right there, across from him and it takes all his courage to look away. The crowd pauses, utterly mutes, as he focuses on his job. His body moves through the motions of his check in with a frowning Sakusa, who gingerly holds a wrist in his hand, then with a mid-story Bokuto who has to be torn away from Atsumu and Hinata for a last second roll of his shoulder beneath Iwaizumi’s investigative touch. All of it passes by in a blur, the fog of the gymnasium lost in the background before announcements are made and the whistle blows and Iwaizumi sits so close, but so far away, his attention forced on the well-being of his team when it craves to steal away for another glance.

  
  
  


_ “Don’t look so down, Iwa-chan.” _

_ The shadows of Oikawa’s lashes dance beneath his eyes. Iwaizumi counts them.  _

_ “This is an opportunity,” he continues, that far-off look settling back out over the grounds and lingering toward the gate that will lead them home for the very last time. “A challenge.” _

_ “Always gotta be a game to you, Shittykawa,” he says, clinging to the few stable remnants of that aching thing in his chest.  _

_ Oikawa’s lopsided grin springs to life, stretching across his cheeks and he takes the first step down, the first step away. “Can’t stop now, you know?” _

_ Iwaizumi doesn’t answer, bracing himself and following his best friend down the stairs instead.  _

_ “I think,” Oikawa says, the coy lilt in his voice damp, heavy, “that we should make a bet.” _

_ A bet? he thinks, because a bet would mean that they will still be involved enough to call in their winnings and come tomorrow Oikawa Tooru will be on a plane, charting across the globe on a makeshift throne carrying little but his tilted crown while Iwaizumi will be here-- alone and waiting for the next step to come to him without the force that is Oikawa to lead him to it.  _

_ A shoulder knocks him off his path and Iwaizumi takes a stumbling few steps to straighten as the front gates of their high school loom overhead. He looks up and Oikawa is waiting.  _

_ “I’m listening.” _

  
  
  


He wraps Hakuba’s fingers deftly, sending glares at Yaku over his shoulder to keep him from removing the ice from his knee too soon. They’ll need him again soon, and Iwaizumi tells him as much. He’s survived until midway through the fifth and final set and with two wins for either team it’s all too close for comfort and yet Iwaizumi is itching with a dormant pride and a veil of clarity desperately hidden beneath the tattoo beating of his heart. 

For a moment, he sneaks a glance. 

Blue uniforms and men he doesn’t recognize surrounding the one he does. An echo of a laugh he’s known in treetops and pajamas and trips to the mall and hours and hours of practice that only ends when Iwaizumi drags that long-ended laugh away and out into the late night air. 

And then-- hair that whispers as a head turns.

  
  
  


_ “One day,” Oikawa says, a skip to his voice that he doesn’t seem to have the energy to actually perform the way he sometimes does as they follow the same route they do every day, “we’ll play together again-- on opposite sides of the net.” _

_ Iwaizumi doesn’t need to tell him that he likely won’t be playing volleyball much longer-- not long enough to play against him when he’s finished with his jet-setting at least. He might end up going through the motions, might end up on a team in college, but that’s less a goal and more a side effect of the presence of Oikawa Tooru inhabiting his life and mind for so long.  _

_ Iwaizumi loves the game-- he does.  _

_ But when he thinks of the rest of his life he thinks of  _ passion  _ and a chase for something so satisfying that there will never be enough of it to keep him away-- something so fulfilling that it burns and aches in his bones.  _

_ He avoids Oikawa’s eyes, looking ahead at the final dregs of sunlight clinging to the horizon and pretends he doesn’t see Oikawa’s limp in his peripherals.  _

_ “When that day comes,” Oikawa says, blissfully, painstakingly, ignoring Iwaizumi’s mood, “if I win, you’re going to kiss me.” _

  
  
  
  


Nine years. 

It’s been nine years of catching him on screens, internationally broadcasted or shared directly onto his too-small phone screen and though the Olympic stage surrounds them-- thousands of eyes hanging over them-- they pause. He feels it, the way Oikawa takes this moment with him, lips clamped shut in a smooth line while his teammates continue talking to him without receiving an answer. 

Iwaizumi has seen this face before.

Every evening when the rest of the team had long gone home, but Iwaizumi storms in anyway. 

The night before a big test when Oikawa flips on the green night-light beneath his window for Iwaizumi to see and answer. 

When Oikawa forgets his lunch and Iwaizumi always happens to have a few extra onigiri to spare. 

That last walk home, nearly a decade ago. 

  
  
  


_ He stops.  _

_ Their block is just ahead, the lamplight flickering over the asphalt road that separates the houses they’ve grown up in, side by side, always together.  _

_ “Kiss you?” _

_ Oikawa doesn’t stop with him, only slows and waves a flippant hand over his shoulder as if he hasn’t a care in the world. “Don’t be mean, Iwa-chan,” he says, slipping a glance back to him. “If you don’t like the outcome, then you better win.” _

_ Iwaizumi watches him, then, walking ahead along their street in the completely unassuming, but unraveling way he always has over the last ten years. Today there is no homework waiting for them. No tapes to study for the upcoming match. No new releases to go rent from the video store. No sleepovers and no silent, weighted lingerings on porches as drops fall from cheeks to concrete without a word shared between them.  _

_ He takes a deep breath and follows him home.  _

_ “And what if I win?” _

  
  
  


Bodies crash into him, a deafening, triumphant sound rolling around him in breaking waves as he rises from the bench beside a row of teammates with tears leaking from the corners of their eyes that drag down over wide, victorious smiles. Celebration thunders through the arena, his friends throwing themselves at each other in a shameless joy that tethers them all together and Iwaizumi is so proud.

But he has another tether.

It takes more than a minute, maybe two or five or ten or twenty, he isn’t sure-- but he watches a man in a blue uniform with hair that whispers as it moves and eyes that bleed with intensity and a gait that demands as it moves. 

And by the time he finally looks back at him, Iwaizumi is already moving. 

Oikawa doesn’t move, his face tight and haughty in the security blanket Iwaizumi has witnessed too many times for his own liking, and Iwaizumi charges across the court, shouldering past anyone from either team that gets in his way. Oikawa raises a slow brow at him, even as his teammates start to scatter away. 

“I really thought you’d grow out of your gorilla phase, Iwa--”

Oikawa finally --  _ finally  _ \-- shuts up with Iwaizumi’s hands on his face and lips pressed to his and it feels like the whole world is watching as Oikawa freezes and thaws and melts into his touch and it feels like they’re back on that street again-- so long ago. 

  
  
  
  


_ “Well, then, I guess you can have whatever you want too, Hajime.” _

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
